FAU Scientist Developing Technology to Communicate with Dolphins

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FAU Scientist Developing Technology to Communicate with Dolphins

"Although no photographs of it have been released yet, we know the Spielbergian-sounding Cetacean Hearing and Telemetry, or CHAT, interface is real, as are the hopes it carries. It is an iPhone-sized device with two hydrophones attached and a unique one-handed keyboard called a twiddler, which, when combined, is designed to be worn around a diver's neck while swimming with wild dolphins. Inside this box is a processor that contains a complex algorithm or pattern detector that, it is hoped, will learn to identify the fundamental units of dolphin acoustic communication to enable humans to decode dolphin and then reply.

"CHAT is more a potential interface than a translator as it is supplying us humans with an acoustic bridge to allow exchanges between two acoustic species," says Dr Denise Herzing, of the Department of Biological and Psychological Sciences at Florida Atlantic University and founder of the Wild Dolphin Project. She began her long-term study of a pod of Atlantic spotted dolphins in 1985 and, with Dr Thad Starner from the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Interactive Sciences, is the brains behind CHAT."